


A One-Time Thing

by usurpingwomen



Series: A One-Time Thing [1]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Behind the Scenes, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Fluff, Episode: s14e03 Twenty-Five Acts, Episode: s15e06 October Surprise, Episode: s16e01 Disappeared Girls, Episode: s16e23 Surrendering Noah, Episode: s17e05 Community Policing, Episode: s17e08 Depravity Standard, Episode: s18e15 Know it All, Established Relationship, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Olivia is so extra, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-Episode: s19e13 The Undiscovered Country, Suit Kink, self-indulgent af, so many feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-17 05:28:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15454335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usurpingwomen/pseuds/usurpingwomen
Summary: What if Barba and Benson have been romantically entangled, off and on, pretty much since the day they met? 5 times Barba stayed the night + the 1 day he decided to stay forever.





	1. Chapter 1

“Congratulations again, Counselor,” Olivia said, catching up with Barba after he finished his victory lap with the press. 

Jocelyn Paley’s violent assault at the hands of talk show host Adam Cain was a tough case to win, and Manhattan’s newest ADA had gone to incredible lengths to earn their guilty verdict. Incredible lengths, including claiming ( _feigning?_ she wondered absently) ignorance on rough sex techniques and goading the defendant into choking him with his own belt in open court. His demeanor was infuriating, but she couldn’t deny that his methods were effective. _And kinda hot,_ her brain intruded.

“I told you I win cases that other prosecutors duck,” he smirked, straightening his tie and suit jacket.

“Actually, I told _you_ that,” she replied. “And I wasn’t sure you could pull it off until that, uh. That stunt with the belt.” She blushed. Her stomach fluttered a little when she realized that he was blushing, too. _So maybe he really is just an Average Joe,_ she thought. Then she tried desperately to stop thinking about it. _Cool it, Olivia,_ she chided herself. 

It had been awhile for Olivia, and she was… _empowered_ enough to admit to herself that it was driving her to distraction. She and Brian had been distant since they came back from the Bahamas, neither of them sure about whether this thing between them had any staying power. He was still hung up on Carissa, she suspected. When she asked him point blank what exactly they were doing together, he had stuttered something about reconnecting with an old friend, and they hadn’t really spoken since. She was just a little lonely, a little... frustrated, she rationalized, and that was why she couldn’t stop flirting with the arrogant, infuriating, ruthless, insensitive, unbelievably sexy new prosecutor. 

“Yes, well,” he said, clearing his throat. “The jury had no incentive to believe Jocelyn when she told them who she was. I had to force him to show them who _he_ was instead.” 

“Well, you gave them quite a show,” Olivia said before she could think better of it.

“I thought you didn’t approve of me, Detective,” he said. 

“I’m coming around,” she replied.

She realized they’d been staring at each other for a heated moment when he cleared his throat again and looked around the courthouse steps. “Do you want to get a drink?” he asked. 

She should say no. She knew that. She couldn’t trust her mouth around him, and after his breakout performance with Manhattan SVU there was a chance they would be working together more often. She had become entangled with ADAs before, and it only ended in heartbreak. She had liked David Haden, and she had loved Alex Cabot, but relationships between detectives and prosecutors were so complicated. _Who said anything about a relationship?_ her brain protested.

What the hell. They’d won an impossible case, and Cragen was coming back, and Barba looked so damn _tempting_ in his purple tie. She felt like celebrating. “Sure,” she smiled. “You have a place in mind?”

 

~~~~~

 

They ended up at a little place near the courthouse called Forlini’s, sitting at the bar, rehashing the case, and cases from their pasts. After about an hour or so, Rollins and Amaro walked through the door. They both shot her quizzical looks until Barba asked if they wanted to join them, and they all ended up getting dinner at one of the nearby tables. After a couple hours, Rollins and Amaro left, offering to walk her home, but she declined. Amaro looked a little confused, maybe even a little angry, shooting glances between them, but it wasn’t his business, she rationalized. They were just two adults having dinner. Rollins practically dragged him by his shirtsleeves out of the restaurant.

After Rollins and Amaro left, Olivia and Barba returned to their seats at the bar. He looked right at home there, she noticed. She had asked the bartender for a Merlot, but Barba didn’t have to order at all. The bartender seemed to recognize him and immediately poured him a bourbon. They had both taken off their suit jackets, and Olivia found her gaze lingering at his throat. _To check for bruising,_ she rationalized. She’d been doing a lot of rationalizing around him lately. She ordered another drink.

“How long have you been with Special Victims?” he asked her, swirling the liquor in his own glass before taking a sip. 

“Long enough,” she replied.

“Ten years?”

“Fourteen.”

He looked surprised. “It’s a dirty job. You ever think about leaving?”

“Not seriously.”

“Why not?”

“I suspect it’s the same reason you’ll never leave the DA’s office.”

Now he looked really surprised. “I won’t? Why’s that?”

“Your reputation precedes you, Counselor. I don’t have to tell you how good you are, because I’m sure you hear it often enough, especially from defense firms trying to win you over to the dark side. You know you’re amazing in the courtroom. There’s no need for me to stroke your ego,” she teased, leaning a little too heavily on the word “stroke” to be making an innocent observation. He cocked an eyebrow suggestively. “But there’s a reason why you get the tough cases, the big cases, and you win them. You want to protect people. You want justice.”

“I want to win,” he rebutted, still wearing a dirty smirk. Maybe she was taking this too far, she thought. _Take it farther,_ whispered the parts of her brain that were starved for touch. 

“You could win anywhere. It’s more than that.” He shook his head. She smiled and sipped her wine. “You don’t have to admit it. You can pretend to be a big, scary prosecutor with a big, brass ego.” He laughed out loud at her dig. “But I know why you’re doing this.”

“You seem to have a lot of ideas about me, Detective,” he said.

“Don’t get me started on my _ideas_ about you, Counselor.” He choked on his bourbon. 

_Shit._

She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. She really, definitely, absolutely should not have said that out loud. She looked at him, eyes wide, and noticed that he had recovered, and was smiling. Well, smirking. She wondered if he ever smiled without looking like a smug bastard. She wanted to kiss the smirk off his face. _Jesus, what is wrong with me?_ she thought.

“So what did it for you, Detective?” he asked finally, still smirking.

“I don’t know what you mean.” _He’s going to be a dick about this,_ she realized.

“Come on, we’re past that now. Was it the banter? The suits? Surely you don’t have a thing for lawyers. A competence kink, maybe?”

“Fuck you, Barba.” Her cheeks were burning. She thought she might melt into her chair.

“Just tell me it wasn’t the belt. I’m not up for that. Not tonight, anyway,” he said, his sparkling eyes slanted toward her. 

“Oh my god,” she said, moving for her jacket. He wasn’t just a smug bastard. He was an arrogant prick.

“I can tell you what did it for me,” he called after her. She stopped short. _This is a bad idea,_ she thought. _I should walk out right now. I should probably run._

There was a challenge in his eyes, but an unexpected softness, too. “When I was pushing Jocelyn for information, after we found out she lied to us about the book and almost ruined our case, you pushed back at me.” He stopped and took another sip, then looked in her eyes. “I saw how hard you worked to make this case. You had just as much riding on this as I did, maybe more. And you had nothing but compassion for her. No ego. No anger. No bullshit. All cops should be like that. Your integrity turns me on, Detective.” She stared into his eyes. “That, and your great ass,” he said, knocking back the rest of his drink. She smiled and leaned in toward him.

“Well I don’t know what to tell you, Counselor. For me, it was the belt, so.” He threw his head back and laughed, and she smiled up at him. She couldn’t stop staring at his eyes. She couldn’t stop smiling. 

“Do you want to get out of here?” she asked. 

He got out his wallet and threw down a few bills. “Your place?” he asked. 

“Sure,” she replied.

 

~~

 

They ended up making out in the cab on the way to her apartment. His mouth was as intense as his eyes, and his hands were everywhere. She was almost horizontal across the back seat, grasping at him, trying desperately to maintain her composure. “This - ah,” she said as he bit her neck. “This is a one-time thing, right?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said, taking a break from sucking on her pulse point. “We’re colleagues, we’re workaholics. We’re on the same page, don’t worry. Shit. Do that again,” he breathed as she pulled his hair. She complied. 

 

~~

 

When they finally got into her apartment, he pushed her up against the door. “Nice building,” he remarked as he pulled her jacket off her shoulders and tangled his fingers in her hair. “Two bedrooms?” he asked before he planted a bruising kiss on her mouth and worked his way down, down.

He pushed his thigh between her legs, and she groaned at the delicious pressure. “Yes,” she whispered. 

“Are you answering me or just enjoying yourself?” he asked smugly, nipping at her collarbone.

“Barba,” she said, and he paused to look at her. “Please take me to my bedroom. One of two in this apartment, since you asked.”

“Lead the way, Detective,” he said, releasing her from where she was pinned. 

Her bedroom was clean, thank God. She had nervously tidied up the night before while agonizing over the jury’s too-long deliberation. She turned to face him after scanning the room for anything embarrassing and found that he had removed his suit jacket and vest. He was working on his tie. “Let me,” she said. He brought his hands to her waist instead, slipping his fingers under her shirt and caressing her hips as she fiddled with the garment, savoring the feeling of the cool silk against her fingertips. She slipped the tie from around his collar and tossed it lightly on top of her bookshelf. “Looks expensive,” she explained with faux concern. 

He pulled her closer by her hips. “So it _was_ the suits that turned you on?” he asked, skirting his mouth along her jawline. 

She unbuttoned the top button of his blue and white checkered shirt. “You just want me to say it’s the suits so you can justify how much time you spend getting dressed in the morning,” she teased. He nipped at her ear in response, and her breath hitched. She made quick work of the rest of his buttons. 

She slid his shirt the rest of the way off his body, delighting in the feeling of the taut muscles of his chest beneath her fingers. She pushed him, lightly, down onto her bed, and he settled against her duvet cover. _He looks like a god,_ she thought, but would never tell him. She kissed his neck at a particularly sensitive spot she had noticed, and he hissed through gritted teeth. His hands moved to grasp her waist as she kneeled between his legs, but she grabbed them with her own, holding them down on the bed near his waist. He shuddered. She smiled and kissed his Adam’s apple, his clavicle, his pec. She grazed his nipple with her teeth and his hands pushed back against hers, breath stuttering. She refused to release him. 

“Unlawful imprisonment,” he said through gritted teeth. 

“Don’t make me use my handcuffs, Counselor.” She licked and then bit the skin just under his navel. He swore. She bit him again. He was shuddering now, his skin covered in goosebumps, and she laughed, her hot breath teasing the skin just above the button on his pants. She released his hands, and he immediately used them to drag her up to his mouth, kissing her fervently, his tongue dancing along her lower lip and marrying itself with her own. His hands roved from her hair to her waist to her ass, and she deftly unbuttoned and unzipped his pants. Her fingers ghosted over his erection, and he let out a soft groan. 

She extricated herself from his grasp and stood up. He slid toward the end of the bed to chase her, and she used the opportunity to pull his pants and boxers down past his knees. His freed erection jumped in anticipation as she sank to her knees on the floor in front of him. 

“Dios mío,” he whispered. “Dear God, what are you doing to me.” She unceremoniously swallowed him whole. 

He convulsed against her, crying out from over-stimulation, and she eased back. She took her time with him, working him up, learning his body. As she alternated between bobbing her head and twirling her tongue while twisting her hands along his length, his fingers danced in her hair. He was being gentle with her, whispering the whole time that her mouth was “so good, yes, please, just like that, oh my god” until she lifted a hand up and dragged her fingers lightly across his balls. He convulsed again, his hands fisting in her hair, his hips pistoning up into her mouth. He cried out, loud and low, and it nearly undid her. She sucked at the head of him, lovingly, once more, and then lifted her eyes to look up at him. 

Maybe it was his eyebrows, she thought. Dark and thick, set low just above his eyes, almost touching his beautiful lashes. They lent an authority, and intensity to his gaze that robbed her of whatever teasing comment had come to the tip of her tongue. “Come here,” he said, and she did. He kissed her fiercely, his teeth and tongue at war with her own, and then he stood up. He stepped out of his pants and boxers and stood before her in just his socks. (They were an argyle pattern, purple and gray. They matched his tie, she realized, delighted.) He pulled her shirt over her head and made quick work of her bra, then leaned her back and pulled off her pants as well, leaving just her panties. He knelt on the bed next to her, still staring his intense stare, intimidating and exciting the hell out of her. She began to squirm under his gaze, then writhe. Finally, after what felt like eons of him not touching her, only staring, she huffed out a breath. “Come on, Barba,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re all talk.” She smirked up at him. 

“You’re beautiful,” he said. 

Then his mouth descended on her nipple, and her senses went into overdrive. He was perched over her, administering scorching kisses across her chest and stomach. When his mouth was on one breast, he teased the other with his hand. Then he brought his mouth back to hers, and his fingers trailed down to her underwear. He slipped a hand under the thin fabric and began rubbing slow, firm circles over the knot that was her clitoris. She moaned into his mouth. 

“How’s that?” he asked, his lips never leaving hers. He quickened his pace, and she gasped. He huffed a laugh into her mouth. Her legs started to quiver, her hips began to buck. He laid next to her and strung one leg over both of hers, his bent knee pinning her to where she lay. “Tell me how you like it,” he demanded, and it came out like a growl, low and slow. He never once stopped kissing her mouth, worrying her lips with his teeth, tongues dancing between them. It was what he had said in the courtroom, she realized, when he had been cross-examining Adam Cain, but it was different here. There was no bravado in his voice, no teasing. He wanted to make her feel good, needed her to moan, shake, cry out. 

“Oh my god,” she breathed, and he slipped a finger inside her, still carefully administering pressure to her clit. “Jesus Christ. Don’t stop.” 

She felt his lips quirk unto a smile against her own as he added another finger, driving her past desire and into madness. She moaned and released a positively filthy combination of swears and praise. Her hips bucked, and he whispered, “Come on, good girl. Let me hear you come.” 

The world exploded behind her eyes. He pushed her through her orgasm, trying to make the sensations last, and she almost cried with pleasure until the waves of her release slowed, subsided. 

He pulled his hand out of her underwear, kissed her again, lightly, just so, and said, “You look amazing.”

“You _are_ amazing,” she said, knowing he needed to hear it. “Fuck, that was so hot.” 

He hummed against her lips. They kissed a little longer, slow and languid. She got her breath back, but her nerves were still revolting against the rest of her body. She had almost come all the way down when he began sliding her underwear down her body and pushing her legs apart gently, his hot breath against her thighs making her shiver once again. Then he put his mouth on her tender, swollen bundle of nerves. She jerked against him and reached down, pulling at his hair. It only spurred him on, and he lapped at her harder, then suckled at her clit. He was tender, attentive, coaxing her desire back into a sharpened peak. In what felt like only seconds, she was quaking again, shuddering, screaming, and finally, coming, bucking wildly against his mouth and tugging hard on his hair, his name on her lips like a sob. He released her clit and bit her, hard, on her thigh near her entrance. She shrieked in ecstasy. 

“Mercy,” she finally gasped. “Mercy. I need a minute.” It was too much, too good. Her nerves were on fire. Her blood had turned to cement. She had never, never felt this good. She laid back against the bed and covered her face with her forearm. He was next to her in an instant, cuddled close to her body. He stroked her hair, kissed her temples and her hands. He whispered how beautiful she was, how good she made him feel, how badly he had wanted this to happen. The intensity in his voice was still there, but it had changed, somehow. It seemed like he no longer felt he had anything to prove to her. He was just focused now on making her happy, making her feel desired, making her come. Her tremors subsided, and she removed her hand from her face. He kissed her sweetly, mouth closed, and she smiled at him. “Can I ask you something, Barba?” 

“Anything,” he responded. 

“Do you ever stop talking?” 

He let out a surprised, joyful laugh, and then rolled on top of her, burying his face in the crook of her neck, his hands sliding playfully over her ribs and hips. She moaned lightly under his touch and felt his dick twitch against her hip. “There are condoms in the top drawer of my bedside table,” she purred in his ear. He swore. “You have a filthy mouth, Counselor.” 

He tore open the condom wrapper and discarded it, then rolled the condom along his length. He hovered over her and stared into her eyes. He kissed her lightly. “Is this okay, Detective?” he asked, lining himself up against her. 

She was touched by his softness, his sweetness. _His request for affirmative consent before engaging in sex,_ the cop part of her brain added. “Yes,” she said simply, then, when he seamlessly slid himself all the way inside her, louder, she cried, “Yes. Oh my god yes.” As he pulled out and rocked his hips against her slowly, “Yes.” As he reached down to tease her clit, “Yes.” As he established a rhythm she liked, turning her inside out with pleasure, “Yes, yes, yes, yes.” 

“Barba,” she gasped, as his thrusts gained power and momentum. “Barba,“ she cried out as a deep and well-placed thrust of his hips sent her over the edge a third time. 

He rode her through her orgasm, through her gasps and whines, until finally, she said, “Switch me. It’s your turn.” He protested lightly, and she added, “I want to be in control of this one.” 

He acquiesced, embracing her and rolling onto his back, pulling her with him, still sheathed deep inside her. She kissed him roughly, then sat up, using her new position to take him deeper still. His eyes fluttered closed. She rested her hands on his pecs and rocked, once, twice. Pulling herself almost all the way off of him and then letting her whole weight drop against his length. “More,” he asked, and she did it again. He moaned, and she picked up her speed, rocking up and down on her knees. His hands found her ass and he squeezed, then braced his hands on her hips, his fingers biting into her flesh. 

He pushed her harder down on top of him, hitting her deep and delicious and perfect, and her hands on his pecs clenched, nails raking his skin. His eyes flew open and he pulled her down to him again, again, again, yelling things like “fuck,” and “more,” and finally, “please, please, please.” Finally, together, they exploded into bliss. Stars were born and died, tsunamis overtook the earth, a wildfire ignited the bed, and they rocked together, alone on the planet, surrounded by nothing but their pleasure. 

She slumped against him, both breathing hard, exhausted but triumphant. They cuddled like that for a bit, her head on his chest, his lips in her hair. Eventually, she rolled off him gingerly, and he flinched as she lay down beside him. She kissed his cheek and he opened his eyes into slits. 

“There’s a bathroom down the hall on the right,” she said. “Whenever you’re ready.” After a moment, he groaned and stood up to leave the room. She watched his ass as he left, marveling absentmindedly at its curve, the strength of his thighs. When he returned, she stood and walked past him, stopping to kiss him on the shoulder as she made her way to the bathroom to clean up. 

When she got back, he was standing in the middle of her room, still naked except for his socks, she realized. He seemed unsure of himself, not at all like she expected. She moved toward him and rested her arms up on his shoulders, pulling him close. He slid his arms around her waist, caressing her tender skin. They were almost dancing. 

“So, that.” He cleared his throat. “That was a one-time thing?” he asked. 

She considered him for a long moment. The damage was done. Might as well dance in the rain, so to speak. “Counter offer,” she said. 

“What?” he asked, surprise lighting up his face. He wasn’t smirking anymore. He looked a little older, a little more real. He was beautiful. 

“I have a counter offer. You stay the night. I get to be the little spoon. And in exchange,” she added, “in the morning, we can do it again. A one-time thing.” 

His eyes danced. “Are you sure about that, Detective?” He kissed her long and slow. She pulled him toward her bed. 

“Final offer, Counselor,” she replied. 

“I have no objections,” he murmured. They arranged themselves under her duvet, with him curled around her, drawing her back toward his chest and looping a possessive arm over her waist, his hand on her heart. 

She almost couldn’t wait until morning.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Olivia and Barba are having a hard time. Bad decisions abound. Technically, Olivia stays the night in this one.

“Counselor,” called a familiar voice from behind him. “I didn’t see you come in.”

Barba turned down the speaker on the observation mirror. It had been over a year since their one-night stand, but every time Olivia Benson called him Counselor, he couldn’t help but remember her hovering over him, threatening him with her handcuffs. His pulse quickened, and he smirked to cover an involuntary shiver. He probably wouldn’t have slept with her if he knew he would be seeing her so much. He definitely wouldn’t have slept with her if he knew he would _like_ her so much. He remembered the look in her eyes that first night at the bar. Hell, maybe he would’ve. 

“I didn’t want to make it a state occasion,” he joked.

She walked behind him and glanced briefly into the interrogation room, recognizing the suspect immediately. “This case is a little below your radar, no?”

He hesitated. It would look bad to anyone else on the squad if it seemed like he was covering for an old friend, but he knew Eddie, and more importantly, he knew Olivia. The SVU detectives were good, sometimes too good, and he would hate to see Eddie get in over his head. “I have… an interest,” he confided. She raised her eyebrows, her curiosity and concern written on her face. “Sidebar?” he asked, trying to disguise his hopefulness. She nodded and walked past him, toward the elevator. He was almost too distracted to watch her walk out the door. 

 

~~~

 

She was hungry, so they ended up getting lunch at Forlini’s. They both got burgers and split an extra order of fries while they caught up. It felt good just to talk with her, laugh with her, and he felt some of the stress of his day subside. But when their coffee came, she looked at him pointedly, and he spilled. They talked about his childhood with Alex and Eddie, Alex’s visit to his office, and his fears about Eddie making self-destructive choices in the wake of his failed marriage. She hesitated at his request for the benefit of the doubt, pushing gently back against his insistence that Eddie wouldn’t do this, but he knew she trusted him. She covered his hand with her own, and in his relief, he almost picked it up to kiss her fingers, but he thought better of it.

When he found out she was seeing someone shortly after their encounter, in the back of his mind, he was disappointed. He told himself it was because she had shut down the possibility for another one-night stand, but that didn’t explain the twinge in his gut, the sinking of his heart whenever he saw her with Cassidy. He threw himself into a couple of short-lived relationships at first, but he realized after a few months that those would never work. Mostly because he picked up the terribly self-destructive habit of always coming when Olivia called. He winced, remembering the furious woman he had abandoned on a yacht to get Olivia a warrant during a time-sensitive case. There were other ADAs, he knew, most of whom were not out at sea. But she had asked for him, so he came. 

They had only talked about their history once, when they were exhausted, and a little drunk, and his cheeks still burned over his shameless vulnerability that night. As their personal and professional relationship grew, so did his attachment to her, his overwhelming craving for her company, and it slowly chipped away at his infamous self-control. They had been celebrating, flirting, and he asked her point blank if she knew what she was doing to him. 

“What do you mean?” she asked, smiling a confused smile, still leaning into him.

He smiled back, but his words came out a little too earnest, a little too desperate to match her teasing tone. “I mean, do you know how hard you make it for me to remember that we have a job to do? When you yelled at me in my office yesterday, I had to stop myself from kissing you just to shut you up. I forgot Amaro was even in the room.” He knocked back the rest of his drink. “You’re a goddamn nuisance, Detective.”

When he looked over at her, she was still smiling that exasperating smile. “This is funny to you?”

“I stormed out to stop myself from kissing you. Nick had to chase me to the elevator. I forgot he was there, too.”

Now he was mirroring her smile. They sat together in silence for a long while, choosing not to say things they both already knew and didn’t want to hear. 

“Dammit,” he said at last. 

“We work well together, Barba.” 

“Don’t remind me,” he teased darkly. 

“I promise to try to stop… challenging you as much, if you promise to stop walking around in those suspenders.”

“You don’t like my suspenders?”

“I wish that were the problem.”

He laughed. “I’ll try to keep my vest on, Detective.”

“Thank you.” She finished her wine and flagged the bartender down for another glass.

He couldn’t resist adding, “And if you ever kick Cassidy out of bed—"

She shot him a sharp look, but she was laughing. “Watch it, Counselor.” 

So he didn’t exactly love the idea of her with Cassidy, or with anyone else, and he tried to keep a more professional distance after their conversation. But after the ordeal with William Lewis, he gave up on that too. 

He hadn’t eaten, hadn’t slept, once he realized that she was missing. He replayed Lewis’s trial over and over, agonizing over mistakes he made, wondering how he could have protected her, prevented this. When she came back, and he saw the physical and psychological torment Lewis had wrought on her (and he saw it over and over, in evidence photos, in case notes, in the back of his mind when he was trying to fall asleep), he wanted to show up at her door, hold her all night long. _As her friend,_ he lied to himself. But she had Cassidy for that, and he made himself be grateful that she wasn’t alone. 

He didn’t want to be a sad sap, a pathetic old man still pining over a crush. She was a good friend, and he wanted her to be comfortable around him. He tried in earnest to stop thinking about her that way. He failed more often than not.

“You okay, Counselor?” she asked, ducking her head to catch his eye, bringing him back to the present. Her fingers caressed the top of his hand. He willed away the memory of those fingers wrapped around him. She was a very, very good friend, he reminded himself.

“Fine,” he said. “Just. Thank you. For being here.”

“Of course. Always, you know that,” she said. “I’ll take care of the investigation, and I’ll try to keep an open mind about Eddie. But listen, I don’t see this getting any easier on you. Are you sure you want to be involved?”

He smiled at her, a grim little smile. He couldn’t let Eddie down. “I’m sure,” he said. He couldn’t help himself. He kissed her fingers anyway.

 

~~

 

Walking away from Alex Muñoz’s arraignment, he cursed himself for not listening to her when she first suggested he recuse himself. This case had been absolute hell, jeopardizing or outright destroying almost all of his relationships, personal and professional, since birth. He was ducking calls from everyone, even his mother, because the whole city had an opinion on what he should have done better. When he realized the gravity of the situation, that his oldest friend might really be a lecherous, corrupt asshole, he had tried to recuse himself. Too late. He was right about one thing in the whole case: SVU detectives were too good at their jobs. 

He hurried down the steps of the courthouse, avoiding cameras and protestors and supporters of Alex’s mayoral campaign. They were everywhere.

“Barba,” a soft, familiar voice called from behind him. 

“I can’t right now, Olivia.”

“You can’t what?”

“Whatever it is, I can’t.” He was starting to panic, unable to focus his eyes or remember where he was going. The people on the sidewalks looked garish and strange, and he realized belatedly that it was Halloween. 

“Barba, wait,” she said, grabbing his arm. He turned to look at her. “Let me take you home. I have a squad car.” He hesitated. She put her hand on his back, rubbing small circles between his shoulder blades. It felt good. His breathing slowed, and he realized for the first time that he had been hyperventilating.

He looked up at her. “Everything’s falling apart,” he said. 

“Come on. I’m taking you home.” He gave in. Like he always did, with her.

 

~~

 

They were silent on the drive to his apartment. He tried to focus on controlling his breathing, ignoring the stinging behind his eyes. She walked all the way up to his door with him, and then, to his surprise, she followed him in. Barba hadn’t let himself hope she would stay. He sunk down on his leather couch and heard noises coming from the kitchen, glasses clinking together, a bottle dragging across the counter. She’d been here before. 

Actually, they’d done all of this before, after the Micha Green case. Olivia had tried desperately to get Micha to press charges against her abusive boyfriend Caleb, but the case had gone sideways, and even after her mentor was murdered, nothing they said or did could keep Micha safe. Barba had watched from the wings, doing everything in his legal power to help, but feeling that same helpless feeling he remembered from his childhood. When he found out that Micha was murdered, he was quietly devastated. He had failed, once again, to protect an innocent woman from an angry man. He left the police precinct without saying a word. 

Olivia had showed up at his apartment later that night, a bottle in hand. After a few drinks, he told her about his father’s fists, his mother’s broken bones, broken heart. She held his hand while he talked about it, and it didn’t make him feel any less guilty, but it did make him feel less alone. “You ever been in love like that?” he had asked her in her office. He remembered that she didn’t answer.

Olivia came back from the kitchen and handed him a glass, breaking his reverie. She sat next to him and kicked her shoes off, curling her feet under her.

“You don’t have to stay, Olivia.” He didn’t know if she had plans, a case. Someone to get home to. 

“I’m here as long as you want me.” She paused, sipped. He tried not to be relieved. “What are you thinking about?”

“Something Alex said.” The memory left him defeated, overwhelmed. Numb.

“Well, stop that,” she said, and he managed a weak smile. 

“Easier said than done.” He took a long swig of his drink, then looked her in the eyes for the first time since they left the courthouse. “He told me my political career was over. That I could never show my face en el barrio again.”

“He was just threatening you, Barba. He was backed into a corner.”

“I know, I just…” He took another swig. “He might be right. And then all of this was for nothing.”

“All of what?” 

“This stupid job. Long nights, lonely mornings. The job is always the most important thing, because it’s where I’m the most useful. I keep my nose clean, worry about doing the ethical thing, so that one day these small changes we make can become big changes. And if I miss out on opportunities, relationships, vacations, sleep, in the process… it’s all for the job.” He took a shaky breath. “My abuelita calls me el juez. I might have just killed her dream, my dream, Alex’s dream, the dreams of our mothers. Because of this stupid job. And if that’s true…” He hesitated. “I don’t have anything else. I only have this job.”

“I know how you feel,” she started, but he stopped her. 

“You don’t, Olivia. I know you’ve given up things you wanted, too. But you don’t go to bed every night, wake up every morning, alone.”

She dropped her gaze, and he felt guilty. He was glad she had someone, he reminded himself. 

“Liv, it’s not just that, not just… us,” he continued, blushing, stumbling. “We work well together. We trust each other. We’re better together, and I wouldn’t change the work we do. But this has happened before. With… Yelina.”

She met his eyes again, a little surprised. “Muñoz’s wife? You two had a… you had history, right?”

He blew out a breath. He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about this, at all, ever, especially with her. But he couldn’t get the thought out of his mind. “You could say that.”

“Tell me about her.”

He wondered if he would ever stop sighing. “There’s not much to tell. I thought we were in love, but I went to Harvard, and she went to Hudson, and when I came back for Thanksgiving break, she wasn’t in love with me anymore. She was with Alex. Happier than I’d ever seen her.”

“Oh, Barba,” she said.

“It really is fine, Olivia. I’m a big boy. I haven’t been in love with her for a long time, despite what she and Alex may think. She just got in my head, reminded me how long I’ve been doing this.”

She was rubbing small circles on his back again, and he could smell her shampoo. He tried not to think about how she looked in the shower the morning after they spent the night together. He shook his head and continued.

“Before I left for Harvard, she asked me to stay. Go to Hudson with her. Graduate, get married, find a little apartment, start a family. I couldn’t do it. I gave her up. I thought I was doing it for us, for our future, our families, that someday she would understand, and we could... But here we are, thirty years later. She got the marriage, the family, the future, with someone else. I keep making these sacrifices, ending up alone. And now it might be all for nothing. Maybe it was always for nothing.” 

He was feeling sorry for himself, and he hated it, but his loneliness had finally gotten the better of him. He felt her reaching for him, and he went willingly into her arms. She pulled his head against her chest and murmured comforting words, sweet nothings. She kissed his hair, his forehead, his eyelids. His cheeks, his nose, the corner of his mouth. He sat up and looked at her, a question in his eyes. She regarded him as if she were deciding something. “You shouldn’t be alone, Barba. The job, our work, is worth it," she said vehemently. "But you don't deserve to be alone. You don’t… You don’t have to be alone tonight,” she said. Then she crawled into his lap, straddling him, and planted a pliant, soulful kiss on his mouth. 

She tasted just like he remembered. 

They couldn’t do this, he thought fleetingly, his hands in her hair. He tried to remember why. Her lips were so sweet and light, and he reveled in the feeling of her tongue in his mouth. She shifted in his lap, and the delicious weight of her grounded him, rooted him in place, for the first time in ten days. She planted tiny, tender kisses from his lips to his chin to his jaw. He hummed. She hummed back playfully. He wanted to pick her up and carry her to his bedroom, to drive out all the doubt and self-pity he had been stewing in since the Muñoz case broke.

He used every ounce of willpower he had to pull back from her touch. She looked like she wanted to protest, and his stomach did little flips at the thought of her missing him like he missed her. “Olivia,” he said huskily. 

“Yes?”

“I can’t... I can’t be the good guy tonight.” He searched her eyes. “I can’t do the right thing, the thing I’m supposed to do. If you’re expecting me to stop you, I won’t.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“I know,” he said. “But I needed you to hear it. If you feel like you’re going to regret this, I need you to make that call now. You don’t have to stay,” he repeated, an echo of his earlier sentiment. “But I can’t do the chivalrous thing and send you home to… I can’t send you home. I’ve made too many hard choices this week and I’m not making this one.”

She stroked his hair, his stubble. She contemplated. “Do you want to do this?” she asked. 

“So much,” he said honestly, because he couldn’t deny himself the satisfaction of being honest anymore, even to make it easier on her. 

“Then we're doing this. It’s my hard choice to make, not yours.” She kissed him, long and slow. “Let’s get a pizza." 

 

~~~

 

They really did work well together, he thought later, his face between her legs, her back arching off his sheets. They made a good team. She was naked, writhing, more vocal and sure than their first time. They were more comfortable with each other now, more invested in each other. Neither of them was posturing or holding back. 

She pulled his hair, making delicious little noises, undulating her hips to the rhythm his mouth had set. He could die right here with no regrets. He crooked his fingers deep inside her, and her long moans gave way to short, sharp cries. He felt her body coil and tighten under his attention until finally, finally, she tipped over the edge. He pulled his face back and watched, delighting in the way her body responded to his touch, his tongue. Her hips were jerking, legs shaking, and she whispered his name ( _his first name, it was incredible, he never thought his name could sound so good_ ) over and over and over.

He kissed his way from her navel up to her mouth, exploring, cherishing, worshiping her skin under his lips. He took his time on her scar tissue, no longer mournful or guilty over what had happened, only grateful that after all she had endured, they had found their way back to each other. 

She was still quaking under his touch by the time he had kissed his way up to her mouth, so he took his time trailing light kisses over her cheeks, her ears, her hair. Finally, she opened her eyes, and he found such fondness, such desire there that he thought his heart would break. 

He hovered over her as her hands roved up from his elbows to his shoulders and down his chest, his stomach. She took him in her hand and loved on him with long, slow strokes. They had already gone one round, and his body was both overstimulated and exhausted, but he didn’t want to waste any time. 

Her strokes got shorter, faster, rougher, filthier. He tried to keep breathing normally, but it was wasted effort. She lifted her head to suck on his neck the way he liked it ( _she remembers the way I like it_ ), and he groaned. “Condom?” she asked. He collapsed on top of her instead, and she giggled at the sudden extra weight. “You still up for this, Counselor?”

He groaned again, but he was smiling. He felt strangely light. 

She laughed, pushing him off of her and crawling up on her knees. “This drawer?” she asked, and he assented. He sat up against his upholstered headboard and watched her, paying careful attention to the shape of her ass, the curve of her back. She pulled a condom out of the drawer and opened the package, turning to him. She rolled the condom down his length slowly, licking her lips, God help him, and then she straddled him again. She lined herself up and sank down onto him, every movement slow and deliberate. He saw stars. She moved, hips rocking, nails scratching, and he lost all sense of time, his grip on reality. 

Distantly, he knew his mouth was running, but he had no idea what words were coming out, or even what language those words were in. In the back of his mind, new words were surprising him, words like _I need you_ and _I love you_ and _stay, stay_. He worried fleetingly that he would say something neither of them were ready for. He needed something to do with his mouth.

He chased her lips with his own, changing the angle of their connection, and she moaned, sharp and high, her legs giving out underneath her. The angle was intense for both of them, and he swore into her mouth. She was shuddering, close. He did the rest of the work for her, picking her up and pulling her to him again, again, memorizing the ecstasy written on her face, hoping he could make it the last thing he saw on this mortal coil. When she came, almost boneless, she pressed her forehead to his, her fingernails digging into his arms, and he followed her over the cliff at the edge of the world.

Eons later, when their souls returned to their bodies, he realized they were still sitting up, collapsed against his headboard. He slid down from his sitting position to rest his head on his pillow, her head on his shoulder. Somehow, he was still inside her, but he didn’t want to break the connection. He didn’t even know if she was awake anymore. He kissed the top of her head experimentally, and she kissed the crook of his neck in response. He smiled. “You’re my best friend,” he said quietly.

She laughed through her nose. “I should hope so.”

“You’re amazing,” he breathed. She hummed. “And you’re right. The work is worth it.”

“I know.”

His voice was too tender. He didn’t care. “Will anyone miss you at home tonight?”

“No,” she said simply, not bothering to explain. 

“Stay.”

She burrowed her face farther into his neck. “Okay.” 

 

~~

 

The next morning, he woke up with Olivia’s head on his chest, her leg crooked over him, pinning him to the spot where he lay. Their bodies were stuck together with sweat, and her hair was wild, tickling his nose and mouth. He knew this didn’t really change anything. It was just a regular Friday morning. She would have to wake up to go home soon, and when they saw each other later in the day, it would be business as usual. Like it never happened. This was a one-time thing.

None of that changed the fact that he was stupidly, deliriously happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place during and immediately after Season 15 Episode 6, October Surprise. It was really hard for me to write, mostly because I hate seeing Barba sad. My apologies to any Cassidy fans. Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barba needs to know Olivia is okay.

Olivia had almost drifted off on the couch when she heard a soft knock at her door. Noah was asleep on her chest, breathing deeply through his tiny, perfect nose. She wanted to stay like this forever, and she considered it, until the knocking got a little more urgent. She sat up slowly, careful not to jostle her sleeping son, and made her way to the door. She looked through the peephole and sighed, then unlocked and opened the door.

Rafael Barba was standing in the hallway in dark jeans and a pullover, running a hand through his hair, looking totally lost. When he noticed the baby in her arms, he started to apologize. “I thought he would be in bed by now. Is he okay?” 

“He’s fine, Barba. He’s totally fine.” She moved to let him in. “Let me put him to bed and we’ll talk.” 

He followed her back to her room and watched as she put her son in the crib at the foot of her bed. He stood for a few moments, watching Noah’s chest move, the tension in his eyes slowly melting away. His face while he watched her son sleep was so tender that she almost had a hard time reconciling this man with the one who had once made a violent serial rapist cry on the stand. 

“I can’t believe they shot at him,” he whispered.

“He’s okay.”

“I know he is.” He swallowed. “I just needed to see for myself.”

She grabbed the baby monitor and pulled him out of her room, and they sank down into the couch, tangled together.

 

~~

 

It was a little-known fact that Rafael Barba loved babies. His mother had run a daycare center before finishing her master’s degree and getting the job with the charter school, and he spent most of his childhood surrounded by infants. When he was old enough to be of assistance, Barba worked in the nursery most days after school, and he never lost his touch with the little ones. Olivia Benson had learned this deep dark secret when he came over a month after she had begun fostering Noah. The baby had an ear infection, and her new nanny Lucy was just getting over the flu. It had been three straight days of crying, from both mother and son, when there was a knock on Olivia’s door. She opened it up without thinking, and then almost slammed it shut. It was Barba. He put his hand on the door to stop her from closing it. 

“You weren’t answering your phone,” he said. “I needed a copy of a victim’s statement. Also, I was worried about you,” he added, concern evident on his face. “What’s going on?” 

She almost broke down in tears. She didn’t really want him, or anyone, to see her like this. She was pretty sure there was vomit on her shirt and in her hair, and her face was streaked with old makeup and tears. “He has an ear infection, and he has antibiotics but he just won’t stop crying, he’s been crying for days, and I can’t make it better, and I’m a bad m-“ 

He stopped her before she could say it. “You’re not a bad mother, Liv. Don’t even think it. You’re just tired. Give him to me.” 

She balked. “I don’t think—"

“Wait, actually.” He slipped off his suit jacket and vest, showing off his accursed suspenders. She was too upset to appreciate them. Her baby was still screaming. “Here, give him to me now.” In a daze, she complied. 

“There, there, pobrecito, what’s the problem, huh? ¿Qué pasa?” He looked at her. “He’s a little hot, sweaty. Do you mind if I get him into a fresh onesie?” She kept staring. Noah was still crying, but his screams had quieted to sobs. Barba didn’t wait for her response. He walked into the nursery, still making soothing noises to the baby, and picked out a little gray sleeper with giraffes on it. He laid Noah on the changing table gingerly and changed her son so efficiently that Olivia wondered if she had blacked out. “There we go, amigo,” he said to the ever-quieting baby. “Someone looks sleepy.” He looked up at her. “I wasn’t just talking about him. When’s the last time you got an uninterrupted hour?” 

“I don’t know,” she said, still stunned at this new development. She wondered if she was dreaming, or maybe dead. 

He gave her a once-over and shook his head. “Liv, you’re an absolute goddess. But I don’t think you’ve slept or showered since the last time I saw you, and that was almost a week ago.” She didn’t realize it had been that long. “I’ll call Carmen,” he continued. “She can move my afternoon appointments, and I brought my laptop and notes with me. I had a light day scheduled anyway. I’m going to order us lunch, and you’re going to take a shower while I hang out with mi amigo here. We’ll eat, you’ll nap, I’ll watch Noah and try not to show him any crime scene photos. Does that sound good?” 

She kept staring. He walked toward her, bouncing her baby as he went, and kissed her forehead. “You can trust me, Liv. I know my way around a diaper bag. What do you want, Chinese or subs?”

“I don’t care,” she answered. “Are you sure you—“ 

“Yes, I’m sure I’m not going to leave you alone with a sick screaming baby and no backup. He can tell you’re upset, Liv. Once you take a shower, cool off a little, it’ll be like it never happened. For both of you.”

“Okay,” she said. “But I’m leaving the bathroom door open in case he starts screaming again.”

“To show you what a good babysitter I am, I won’t make a single dirty joke about watching you shower,” he said somberly. 

She would smile if her brain wasn’t on fire. “I’ll be just a minute.”

“Take your time,” he called back to her, already bouncing Noah down the hallway toward the living room. 

She didn’t intend to take long in the shower, but once she was under the hot spray, it was hard to convince herself that she needed to get out. When the water was starting to run cold, she finally stepped out, toweled off, and went to look for clothes. The apartment was silent, and she could hear herself think for the first time in days. She cursed, realizing that she hadn’t done laundry in over a week. She lay down on the bed and groaned, completely overwhelmed, squeezing her eyes closed and tossing a hand over her face. 

When she woke up, the apartment was dark. 

She jolted upright, frantically searching for Noah, before she remembered the events of the afternoon. She threw on yesterday’s yoga pants and an NYPD t-shirt with a hole in the collar and crept into the living room. Noah was sleeping quietly in his pack ‘n play, breathing so deeply that he was almost snoring. She stood over him for a few moments, then looked up. Barba was on her couch, pen in his mouth, still in those fucking suspenders, looking for all the world like this happened every day. He jotted something down and looked up at her. “You missed lunch,” he said softly. “And dinner. I checked on you, but it seemed like you needed the nap more. I saved you a plate.”

She looked at the clock, stunned. It was 8:30. She had slept for a little over seven hours. “He needs to eat,” she said, sleep and confusion clouding her brain. 

“He did,” Barba assured her. “And I gave him his medication. You left notes on the refrigerator for Lucy, and I followed those. It’s okay, Liv. Come here.” He reached for her. “Come here,” he said, laughing, when she still hesitated and looked around. She sat next to him and let herself be wrapped in his arms. “Why didn’t you call me? Or Amaro, or Fin?”

She crumpled against him. “I didn’t want them to see this. I’m supposed to be their commanding officer. They’re supposed to trust me to have their backs, always. What would they think of me if they saw me like that?”

“They would think that you’re a new mom, Liv. They would think that you’re doing your best. I get where you’re coming from, but that trust is supposed to go both ways,” he continued. “You should be able to trust them, too. And you’re not my commanding officer,” he added gently. 

“I didn’t think you liked babies,” she said quietly. 

“But you know I like _you_ ,” he teased. “And I love babies.” He kissed her hair. “Come on, I’ll heat up some dinner for you and we’ll talk.”

So they ate, and they talked, and they somehow ended up in bed together, whispering to each other, clutching onto each other, coming together quietly, intensely, deliciously slow and easy. They moved Noah into his crib and Barba offered to stay, to wake up with him at night, to help her cope until Lucy returned to work the next morning. She accepted, too tired and grateful to protest, and they clung to each other all night long.

After that first night, he just kept coming around. For the past three months, he had spent two or three nights a week at her apartment, adoring her son, making her laugh, lifting them both up when she felt like they were sinking. He never coddled her or condescended to her—he was the perfect support system, knowing both when she needed assistance and when she needed to do something herself. He knew she was too proud to ask for help, so he took the asking out of the equation. Now, they had finally taken down the sex trafficker who had ordered the hit on her son’s birth mother, and she felt like she could finally breathe easy, knowing she had done everything she could to protect her son and bring peace to Ellie Porter’s memory. They could move on, she and Noah, as a family.

 

~~

 

When she looked over at Barba beside her now, she realized he wasn’t feeling as calm as she was about their current situation. “They were just warning shots, Barba,” she said quietly. “I know it’s scary. I was scared, too, but he’s safe now. We got the guys who did this, to him and to Ellie,” she assured him, laying her hand on his knee.

“I know you did,” he said. “I was just worried about him, about _you._ I wanted to be there to help you through this, but...”

“I know,” she said, pulling him to her again. 

They had danced around the topic of their relationship a couple of times over the past few weeks. At first, they resolutely avoided talking about it at all, each of them pretending to be surprised when he showed up at her door, inventing false pretenses when they both knew why he was there. They had never considered disclosing their relationship when they knew it was just one night. But after months of waking up in each other’s arms, they had to admit that this time around, it was different. 

“Hypothetically,” she said quietly, “What would happen if an ADA and an SVU sergeant disclosed a romantic relationship?” 

She could tell he was frowning without seeing his face. “It’s complicated.”

“Why is that?”

“It just depends on how long they’ve been sleeping together, how long they’ve been working together, what kind of cases they worked on. There would be…” he hesitated. “A lot of questions. About the timeline, the details. There would be a lot of suspicion, a lot of doubt. If, for example, they admitted to sleeping together, off and on, for two years, they would probably never work together again, and that would be letting them off easy.”

She sighed. She had a feeling it would be something like that. Her saving grace with David Haden had been that they didn’t work together that often, but she saw Barba in a professional capacity almost every day. “What would you do?”

He sat up to look her in the eye. “I think we shouldn’t talk about it, Liv.”

“We have to talk about it,” she protested, but he stopped her.

“No, I mean—” He drew a breath. “I mean, let’s not talk about any of it. Let’s just keep treating it like we did when it was a one-time thing. If we don’t talk about the relationship, there’s not a relationship to disclose. You know what you mean to me,” he continued, searching her eyes for hurt or anger. “But I think if we talk about it, it only gets harder. Maybe it becomes impossible. And as hard as it is to pretend, especially on days like today, when all I wanted to do was _hold you_ …, it would be harder to stop. So let’s just not talk about it.” 

“That sounds like shaky logic at best,” she said, smiling weakly.

“It’s all I’ve got,” he replied, smiling back. “Most of your squad already knows there’s something here, other than the new guy.” She groaned, remembering she had a new detective to break in. He laughed. “I think most of the defense attorneys we see regularly suspect something too, but they’d never say anything unless they were damn sure. Rita makes jokes, but she’s all talk. I’m just saying, maybe leaving it unspoken, unexplained, is the best way to handle this. For us, for your squad, for the victims, for our old cases. I just don’t know what else we can do.”

“I don’t know if I like it, but I’m too tired to think of anything else.” She sighed.

“How are you doing?” he asked, worrying her hands in his own.

“I’m okay,” she said. “Really, Barba. I’m fine.”

“Let me see for myself,” he murmured, voice low, and he leaned over her to kiss her. 

Noah’s crib was at the foot of her bed to make it easier to wake up with him in the night, and neither of them were comfortable being intimate with him in the room, so they had been forced to get creative in other parts of the apartment, including in the shower, on the couch, and once on the kitchen counter. Most nights after court, and work, and dinner, and then Noah’s bath and bedtime, they were both exhausted, and they ended up just crawling into bed together, looking for a different kind of comfort. 

But tonight was different. His mouth was hot and insistent on her own. She tipped her head back, and he brought his hand to her face, leaning her back against the arm of the couch. He kissed her face like he wanted to memorize it for posterity. He usually took his time with her, but tonight, his hands were urgent, impatient. He pulled her shirt over her head and then removed her yoga pants and underwear in one quick motion. His hands, his eyes, his mouth were everywhere, from her shoulders to her ankles, inspecting her, checking for imaginary wounds. Finally, he brought his head down and kissed her mouth, whispering “I need you,” then he kissed her again just over her heart. She thought fleetingly that today was harder on him than she had realized. Then his mouth was on her breasts and she stopped thinking.

She gave in to the urgency of his touch, the frantic mood in his kiss. He paid loving, careful attention to her chest and neck as she pulled at his sweater and his t-shirt, trying to get them over his head. She ran her fingers across his shoulders, his back, needing to feel his skin beneath her touch, to know that he was real, and they were both really here, really alive, really together, after everything. He lifted himself off her body, and she missed his weight instantly.

She started to protest until she realized he had stepped out of his jeans and boxers. He was back over her in an instant, kissing her with needy, searching kisses. His hand was between her legs, and he administered skillful caresses, knowing exactly how she liked to be touched. At the height of her desire, she pulled back from his mouth. “I need you, Rafael,” she told him. “Please.”

She only ever called him his first name in bed. She knew what it did for him, and what it did for her, and she knew that if she said it in front of anyone else, neither of them would be able to deny what was between them anymore. As he slipped into her, she cried out again, “Rafael,” and he shuddered and moaned into her neck. He thrust again, and she moaned his name, only to hear him cry back, “Olivia.”

His thrusts were long and fluid, powerful and well-placed, and in just moments, she was shuddering beneath him. She hitched her legs higher on his hips, granting him deeper access, and his thrusts became quicker, more frantic. He placed a hand between them, his thumb rubbing tight circles over her clit, and she felt like each one of her nerves were a sparking match, like she was igniting from the inside out. Finally, after a well-timed thrust, she cried out, and she felt him stutter and shake immediately afterward, reaching his own climax. They rocked together slowly, working out his release, and she was overcome with how much she needed him, her partner, her friend. She stroked his hair, tangling her fingers in his graying locks, her palm on the back of his neck. She felt him kissing her neck blindly, sloppily, felt his goosebumps against her skin, and she couldn’t stop herself. She whispered, “I love you, Rafael. It’s okay, I love you. We’re okay.”

He pulled his head away from her neck and kissed her deeply, then he whispered, “Say it again.”

She looked him in the eyes, and the torment was finally gone. He looked happy, at peace, more alive than she’d seen him in weeks, maybe ever. “I love you,” she whispered, smiling, unexpected tears in her eyes. He looked like he’d just seen the sky for the first time.

“I love you, too, Olivia, mi amor, te amo, my Olivia, I love you,” he was whispering, rambling, almost pleading, but still smiling. “I love you, and I was so worried about you, and you drive me fucking nuts.”

She laughed, a surprised, hiccupy laugh. “I know, Rafael. I love you anyway.”

“I love you more.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place immediately after Season 16, Episode 1, Girls Disappeared. I know there's a scene later in the season when Olivia hands Noah to Barba and he holds the baby like a live bomb, but in my headcanon, they've been together for months at that point, and he knows exactly what kind of hazardous substances can come out of that boy, so he has developed a soft No-Holding-Noah-In-Expensive-Suits rule. Thank you for reading. Your comments make me smile. :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Olivia and Rafael clean up after Noah's adoption party.
> 
> So, listen. I'm breaking with the 5+1 model and adding a bonus chapter here in the middle. It's unadulterated fluff. The next chapter I post is probably going to be very long and definitely going to be very difficult, and these kids deserve to spend more time in domestic bliss than I budgeted for them. I hope you're all as self-indulgent as I am. Happy reading!

They worked well together, he thought fondly as they stood side by side, washing and drying champagne flutes, wine glasses, and forks covered in frosting. Noah’s adoption party had wound down after several hours of chatter and rambunctious play time from the excited toddler. Their guests had gone, wishing them luck and love and happiness as they left, shooting him sarcastic, knowing looks when he made excuses about staying to help clean up. Despite the tough year they had all gone through, they all looked at peace, sitting in Olivia’s little living room, the portrait of a happy family for an afternoon.

He spent most of his time in his regular spot on the couch, perched next to the nanny Lucy, trying to hide his emotions behind the only party guest who really knew that their one-time thing had turned into a sometimes-thing and then a most-nights thing. Halfway through the party, Lucy leaned over to him and whispered, “You look like a proud papa.” 

He smiled, and whispered back, “I am.” 

Olivia had looked stunning, driving him to distraction all day in her baby blue dress and simple but elegant updo. She was the picture of grace and feminine poise, and his mind’s eye flashed forward to images of what she might look like at their wedding. It scared him a little, but it thrilled him even more. Now she was back in yoga pants and a tank top, which was perhaps his favorite look on her. He loved being able to see the freckles on her back and hips. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, her eyes were still full of mirth as she hummed and put away dishes. Noah had finally exhausted himself and was napping in his new toddler bed, recommended by their former case worker, an adoption present from Uncle Rafa himself. (It wasn’t a totally un-selfish gift. The toddler bed was set up in the nursery, and now they would have the bedroom to themselves at night.) 

When the dishes were finally done, he dried his hands and slid his arms around her waist, pressing against the back of her as she reached to place a final glass on a high cabinet shelf. He relished the feeling of her stretching away from him, then settling back, melting into his arms. He rested his chin affectionately on her shoulder and kissed her cheek. “Felicidades, mamì,” he whispered in her ear. “You did it.”

She turned and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “I couldn’t have done it without you,” she said warmly.

“You could’ve, querida, you just didn’t have to. You’re here every night and every morning, seven days a week, worrying about his health, comforting him when he cries, always putting him first. You’re an amazing mother and he’s an amazing boy. Thank you for sharing him with me.” He kissed her then, even though she was still smiling too wide to kiss him back. He thought they might both smile like that for days. They pushed off their perch against the kitchen counter and walked into the living room.

“You really are such a big part of this, though. You made our little family possible. You helped me get justice for Ellie, and you took down Johnny D. I know I made it harder on you,” she said, and he rolled his eyes, remembering how obstinate she was, first by refusing to leave Johnny D’s name off the adoption paperwork, and then by rejecting every deal he brought to her that would reduce Johnny’s sentence in exchange for him relinquishing his parental rights to Noah. 

She did make it harder on him, he knew. But he realized now that she was right. He had been worried that he wouldn’t be able to put Johnny away, worried that he wouldn’t be able to protect Olivia again, worried that they would lose the little boy they both loved so much. When he was threatened, he shrunk into himself, reacting out of fear. When she was threatened, she came back swinging with her teeth bared and claws out. It wasn’t always the right option, but she had been right this time. 

“I’m sorry I doubted you,” he said, pulling her into his lap on the couch, kissing her temple. “I just wanted to protect you, both of you.”

“You did. I’ve never seen you draw a witness out like that. You made the girls feel safe and secure enough to talk about the worst experiences of their lives. I thought the judge was going to cry when Ariel told her story. Johnny D wouldn’t have tried to escape if he didn’t already know you had him.”

“Maybe. I wish it didn’t cost those court officers their lives, or Amaro his knee.”

“Amaro's knee might be a blessing in disguise,” she said vaguely. He shot her a questioning look. “We’ll talk about it later,” she promised. “I just want to enjoy tonight.”

They sank into a reclining position, cuddling across the length of the couch. There was a question on his lips, but he was nervous, not wanting to take the conversation in a direction that might dampen her mood, or his. Just as he decided not to ask his question, she looked up at him and asked one of her own. 

“Would you ever have more kids?” she asked quietly. 

He hesitated. “Would you?”

She laughed. “You’re dodging the question, Counselor.”

“Not really,” he said. “I think my answer might depend on yours.”

Her laughing eyes turned serious. “I’m not sure. I think… ideally, I would like to have more. Maybe just one more. But between Noah’s health, and his language delays, and his energy, he needs so much attention. I don’t think I could give him the time and specialized care he needs while raising another child and doing my job. I already have so much guilt about the amount of time I spend away from him,” she continued. “I can’t imagine how I would feel if there were two little lives depending on me.”

“You’d find a way,” he murmured.

She smiled. “Maybe. I think it would only be fair to Noah if I waited until he was older. But if I wait too long, I’ll be in my seventies by the time my children are out of high school. I don’t know if that’s fair to them, either.”

They both fell quiet, considering. “Someday,” he said. “I used to tell myself that maybe someday I would have kids, if I found the right person and the timing worked out. It would happen or it wouldn’t, but in the back of my mind I hoped it would. Honestly though, Liv,” he said earnestly. “Being Noah’s Uncle Rafa, following your lead, is enough for me. It’s more than I ever really believed I would get. I don’t think it looks like what either of us expected, but we’re a family. I’m happy to be a part of your family.”

“You are?”

“Stupidly, madly, overwhelmingly happy.”

“Me too.” She looked relieved, and he realized that it was hard for her to ask him, hard for her to talk about their uncertain future. He was struck again by her bravery, her tenacity. He decided not to let his fear win either.

“Would you ever want to be married?” he breathed. 

Her eyes bulged briefly. “Are you offering?”

He smirked to cover a blush. This was harder than he thought. “Not right now, not just yet. If I were offering, you would know. But someday, maybe when we feel like we’ve gotten enough work done. I’ve always wanted to be married. What do you want?”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like my work is done," she hedged. "But if I could make marriage work with anyone, I think it would be you.”

“We work well together,” he reminded her, and he leaned in to capture her laughing mouth with his own.

When they came together later that night, finally, blessedly alone in her room, they still didn’t have answers for any of their questions. Neither of them could make the other any promises, or even tell what their family would look like a year from now. He only knew that he would do whatever it took to protect her, to preserve her integrity and sense of purpose, to build her up and make her as happy as he felt every time he looked in her eyes. He only wanted to be a part of her best life, whatever that meant for her, in whatever capacity she would have him. 

Someday might be a distant future, or it might be a pipe dream. None of that mattered tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place after Season 16, Episode 23, Surrendering Noah. Rafael Barba's secret soft side is my favorite thing and no one can convince me that they weren't secretly dating during the entirety of season 16.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: here be angst. 
> 
> Olivia and Barba have an argument.

He was sitting on her couch, most of his second drink behind him, when the apartment door slammed shut. “Man One?!” she shrieked, ripping her jacket off and throwing it to the ground. “What the fuck, Barba?” 

He had just gotten rid of a three-day-long migraine, brought on by the stress of indicting three cops for shooting an unarmed black man in the back, and when she yelled at him, he felt the vein in his forehead pulse with a warning. “You know that’s not what I wanted, Olivia,” he said low through gritted teeth. She had texted him earlier to say that she was dropping Noah off with Rollins for the night and that they needed to talk. He went to her apartment to wait for her, to get their inevitable blow-up over with as quickly as possible.

She scoffed at his excuse. “You seemed like you were getting what you wanted in the grand jury!” she shot back. “How could you push me like that? What did you think I would say?”

“I did my job.” He stood up, heated. He couldn’t believe she was blaming him for this. He stepped toward her, and she stepped closer, not backing down. "You should have done yours."

“Your _job_ is to put away murderers and criminals, not good cops who did the best they could with false information.”

“Good cops? Good cops don’t kill innocent college kids, Olivia,” He growled. “We’re done talking.”

“You’re damn right we are,” she said through gritted teeth, and she grabbed him by the suspenders and kissed him hard on the mouth. 

He felt her pushing against him, trying to force him to lay back on the couch and let her ravage him, but he refused to give her an inch. She was _wrong,_ and angry, and she was being stupid, and she was still so infuriatingly hot that he could barely stand it. He pushed her up against the wall, his mouth still furious over her own. She whined against him, pulling at his suspenders, his shirt buttons, his tie. He released the inside button of her white wrap shirt and dipped his mouth to her breasts, dragging his lips and tongue over her sensitive skin. She had finally gotten his tie off and his buttons open, and his shirt hung loose around his shoulders. She moved her hands to grasp his shoulders, bruising him, her nails stinging his skin, and it only spurred him on. With her mouth finally free, she hissed, “I’m so fucking mad at you, Rafael.”

“I know,” he said, dipping to his knees, delivering searing kisses down her belly. 

“Don’t stop,” she commanded, and he didn’t. He unbuttoned her pants and pulled them down with her underwear, all the way to her ankles and then off her body. He sucked kisses from her knees up to her thighs before hitching one of her legs over his own shoulder and diving face first into her hot center. She was soaking, already quivering and aching for him, and he couldn’t help but smile against her. He slipped a finger inside her, sucking at her as she gyrated against his mouth. Her hands were in his hair, which would normally distract him, but his mind was completely clear. If they couldn’t talk like reasonable adults, at least they still had this. 

Her cries got higher in pitch and frequency, and her legs were shaking against him. He lifted his hands to her hips and pushed back, holding her against the wall, forcing her to still against his face, and she cried out, convulsing against him, wet and hot and completely out of control. Her legs were jelly, and she tried to slip down the wall, but he wouldn’t let her. He held her there and dragged his face back down to her, lapping at her again with renewed vigor. She began to whine, to shudder, to plead with him, but he was relentless in his pursuit of her second release. He nipped, just a light brush of teeth, against her clitoris, and she shrieked. He did it again, alternating with tongue and teeth, loving her angry and insistent cries of “more” and “harder” and “now.” She suspended at the height of her desire for a long moment, overstimulated and tired and desperate for release, when he said her name against her, “Olivia,” as a command, not a question, and her bones turned to liquid as she shuddered through her second orgasm. 

He finally let her slide down the wall and he took her in his arms on the floor, pulling her shirt the rest of the way off and trailing kisses across her body as she caught her breath. “I’m not done with you,” she said when she had enough air in her lungs to communicate.

He looked up from his worship and stared her in the face. “I’m aware.”

“Take me to bed,” she said, and he complied, trailing clothes behind him as they made their way to the bedroom. 

They laid down next to each other and he moved to hold her, to kiss her neck, but she pushed him back down. She grabbed his hands and pinned them over his head. “If you touch me with your hands,” she said, her face right next to his own, “I will tie you down.” 

He groaned, and she reached between his legs where his cock had jumped in anticipation. She stroked him, rough and long, and his hips bucked off the bed. His brain was screaming. She knew he liked to look in her eyes, to touch her, to hear her voice as he made her come. He wanted her so much it was physically painful, and she seemed determined to drag out his suffering for as long as she could. 

Finally, after she brought him to the edge and back down several times, and he was swearing, sweating, gasping, she got up on her knees. But instead of turning to face him, she turned away, straddling his legs with her back to him. He shuddered as she lined herself up over him and slid down the length of his erection.

Their connection was intense, overwhelming. He reached up to her hips, to help her, but she slapped his hands. “Last chance,” she warned, and he moved his arms back over his head. His thoughts were garbled in his mind as she moved over him, against him, rocking on her knees, her head tossed back. He almost lost it then and there when he realized that she had a hand between her legs, touching herself, and another hand on her breast. He gritted his teeth and bucked up into her, listening to her breathing get faster, her sighs get higher, until finally, in ecstasy, she slammed her body down against him, and they shattered. 

She crumpled after their release, her head in her hands, his cock still buried inside of her, and he sat up. “Come here,” he said sweetly, kissing the top of her spine. “My love, come here, let me hold you.”

Finally, the tension between them dissipated, and she sat up and crawled up into his arms. He tossed the rumpled blanket over them and kissed her face and hair. 

“I’m sorry,” he told her.

“Me too.”

“I had to do it,” he pleaded.

“I know.”

“I love you,” he whispered.

She looked up at him. “I love you, too.” She burrowed her face in his neck, her brow still troubled, and they drifted off into sleep. 

 

~~

 

When he woke up, she was crying. 

He sat up with a jolt, searching for a lamp, ready to leap out of bed at her request. “What’s wrong, mi amor? Is it Noah? Amanda? Where do I need to go?” he asked, turning to grip her in a hug.

“No,” she said sobbing. He furrowed his brow.

“No?” he asked.

“Don’t go,” she cried, and he understood. She had woken up like this before, a few times. Usually it was during an intense case, or when she had nightmares about William Lewis. He knew when to kiss her, when to hold her, when to let her have her space and get her a glass of water. He was under so much pressure to get the indictment from the Reynolds shooting that he hadn’t realized how heavily it weighed on her. 

He stroked her hair until she quieted, sniffing and hiccupping. She grabbed a tissue and cleaned up her face, then took a sip of water. Finally, she looked at him, pain still evident in her eyes. 

He melted. “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong, querida?”

She looked like she was about to cry again, and finally, she whispered, “We have to stop.”

His heart dropped out of his chest. He shook his head. “We have to stop fighting? We can do that. We can work on it, mi amor. I’m sorry I pushed you. They won’t make me take cases like that anymore, I promise I won’t let them.”

“No,” she protested, frustrated. “We have to stop being together. We have to break up.” She sobbed again, and he brought a hand to her face, soothing her.

“Olivia, no,” he pleaded. “It was a hard case, I know, but we're on the same team. We can get through this.”

“No, we can’t,” she said, her defeat evident. “You don’t understand, Rafael.”

He thought his chest might explode. His eyes were watering, and he willed his tears back. She was just panicking, just tired and scared. They had been together for over a year, and they’d had tough cases before, but they were good together, they could work it out. He could talk her through this. “Help me understand, Olivia.”

She shook, drawing in a quivering breath. “When I went to drop off Noah with Rollins, she told me that she stopped by the bar. People are pissed, Rafael. They know how close we are. Half the cops I work with think I threw them under the bus to help you get your indictment.”

He couldn’t believe this. “That’s ridiculous,” he protested, but she stopped him.

“It makes sense. Those extra charges, Rafael, they think it had to be a cop’s testimony that swayed the jury. Why not mine? And now that no one trusts me anymore, they’re not going to have my back. Not just mine,” she added, “but Carisi’s, and Fin’s, and Rollins’s. We have no support in the NYPD anymore.” 

He was silent, baffled. 

“There’s more,” she sniffed. “My promotion to Lieutenant.”

“But that’s a good thing, right? We talked about this,” he reasoned. They had talked about it. Being a lieutenant would open a lot of doors for them. The increase in her salary would provide them with extra money in the budget for Noah’s schooling, enough to get him into the really nice preschool a few blocks away. There was no way 1PP would take away her command once she was a lieutenant, and she would be able to make real changes across NYPD for victims of sex crimes. 

“After we went after the employees from DCFS during that child abuse case, they were furious with me. They’re giving me the promotion for the optics, but Chief Dodds is installing a new sergeant in my unit to spy on me.”

“What? You’ve been short staffed for months, and now you get a new sergeant?”

“Yeah,” she said, almost laughing with frustration. “It’s Dodds’s son. They’re looking for any excuse to get rid of me, and Dodds Jr. is probably gunning for my command. If he finds out about us, you and I are both done.”

He tried one last time to make her see reason. "I'll leave the DA's office," he started, but she stopped him, resigned, defeated.

"No, Rafael. You won't. You _are_ a prosecutor. I can't let you give up who you are."

He was stunned. It was clear she had thought about this. He tried to think of a way out, but he could barely hear himself think over the ringing in his ears. After a few long moments, his brain quieted. “You sound sure, Liv.”

“I am,” she said quietly, sniffling. “I can’t risk my job, not anymore. Not with Noah. We waited too long, Rafael. If we disclose now, we just look like liars, and after all of these controversial cases, we’ll be in serious trouble. And if we don’t disclose at all, Dodds will find out and use it to bury us, and any good we might have done together. We have to stop now,” she insisted, her voice shaking. “Or we’ll both lose everything.”

_I already am losing everything,_ he thought but didn't say. “Okay,” he said finally. “Okay. I’m sorry. Tell me what to do.”

“I love you,” she said. She was crying again, hot tears dripping into their mouths as she kissed him. 

“I love you, too,” he assured her. He felt like he was at the bottom of a very deep well. “Tell me what to do.”

“Stay,” she said. “Just tonight. Just one more time.”

He turned out the lamp and pulled her head to his chest, stroking her arms and murmuring comfort. 

"Maybe," she started, then she sniffed again. "Maybe someday we can--"

"Don't do that to me, Olivia. Don't make me promises you can't keep."

She kissed him on the shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay, mi amor. We'll talk about it in the morning."

After a few moments, she drifted to sleep, breathing heavy and deep against him. He stared at the ceiling all night long. 

When dawn broke, he slipped out of her grasp and stood up. He dressed quietly, packed up the few things he left at her house, and crept out the front door without making a sound. He felt like a coward, but he knew it was the only way.

He never would have been able to say goodbye to her.

 

~~

 

The next few weeks were a blur for Rafael. He only went into his office for meetings, and he cancelled as many of those as he could get away with. He pushed arraignments off on a new ADA in their office, telling her it would be good experience. Mostly he sat alone in his apartment, drunk and numb. 

It was his fault, he knew. He was the one who wanted to leave it unspoken. No matter what would have happened to them if they disclosed over a year ago--moving departments, being censured, answering uncomfortable questions that were no one else's business--nothing would have hurt like this. He had backed them into a corner, too high on love and sex and finally feeling like he belonged to someone to realize that it could be taken away. He didn't know if he'd ever get her back. _Someday,_ she had said, and stupidly, he clung to that on his loneliest nights. Someday really was a pipe dream now, and still, it was all he could think about.

Olivia called and left voicemails a few times, but he didn’t call her back. The first few voicemails were tearful and sorry, then she sounded a little pissed off. Finally, she was resigned, giving him the bare minimum details and asking for exactly what she needed. When she asked for warrants, he sent them by email. When that wouldn’t work, he used a courier service. He was too weak not to hold her, too ashamed to look her in the eye. He didn’t see her at all for the rest of August and the entire month of September. He was utterly miserable, completely alone. 

The one bright spot in his life was his weekly appointments in the park with Noah and Lucy. He had texted Olivia’s nanny a few days after the split and asked her when she would be taking Noah to the park next, and if it was all right with her if he tagged along. She agreed, but when she saw him, she flinched. He was sure he was a mess. She didn’t ask questions, though. She just pointed him out to Noah, whose eyes lit up at the familiar face. He knew the transition must be confusing for the toddler, and he wanted to make it as painless as possible. 

They played police, and ninjas, and construction workers. The little boy asked when he was coming home, and he said he would see him next week, asked if he was being good for Mommy. Lucy was good at distracting him too, and she usually stepped in when Noah’s questions got too hard for Barba to answer. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the one part of his life that he was still proud of, still looked forward to.

After one devastating afternoon when Noah clutched onto his leg and cried, yelling “Rafa come home,” and breaking his heart, he went home and opened his laptop. Olivia was crazy if she thought his job was more important than his family. Maybe at one point it would have been, but he had grown enough in the time they were together that it just wasn't true anymore. He would find a different job, any job. He would never work as a defense lawyer, although the pay would be amazing, but he could do something else. Immigration, maybe, or family law. The ACLU, maybe teaching. Hell, he would take a fucking copyright law job if it meant he could come home to Noah and Olivia at night. He had almost twenty years in the DA’s office, he reasoned. He had given the office, the city, everything he had, and he was bled dry. He could leave with his head high and see if Olivia would still have him.

Then the death threats started coming. 

At first, they were just hang-up calls and strange messages, and he wasn’t particularly worried. This was just an occupational hazard. It happened all the time. He considered his allies and ended up asking Fin to trace the calls. He knew out of anyone, he was the least likely to interfere with Olivia’s personal life. It was a dead end, anyway, of course. All the calls came from burners. 

He kept looking for new jobs anyway, kept seeing Noah at the park, usually bringing something small to send him home with now to make the goodbyes a little easier. He still thought maybe whoever was threatening him would get bored and fuck off. He just had to wait them out.

Then someone slipped a picture of him with his mother at the grocery store under his door. The threats became increasingly personal, more credible. There was someone out there who was dangerous, who wanted him gone. He was starting to get scared. But after everything he had gone through with Olivia, he had learned to weaponize his fear.

He knew two things: first, that he couldn’t leave the DA’s office now, not until these threats were neutralized. And second, he had to stop seeing Noah. He could never risk the little boy's safety. He still wasn't ready to talk to Olivia, much less to let her know what was going on with him. She’d been through enough. If he couldn't go home, he might as well stay in his job, keep pissing off the right people. He might as well stay where he was useful. 

 

~~

 

When he heard a knock at his own door, his heart leapt in his chest, one word on his lips, _Olivia_. Then it sank to his stomach. It was more likely to be someone coming to kill him. Either way, he reasoned, a little drunk, someone was coming to put him out of his misery. 

He couldn’t be more wrong.

Detective Carisi stood in his doorway, a brown paper bag of groceries in his arms. Barba considered pretending he wasn’t home until Carisi said, “I know you’re in there. Let me in.”

"How did you get in my building?" he asked through the door.

"Flashin' a badge'll get ya in pretty much anywhere," the detective answered.

He pressed a hand to his face and opened the door. “Why are you here, Carisi?”

The tall, blonde detective pushed his way into his apartment and looked around, searching for the kitchen. “I missed you too, Counselor. I’m here to cook for you.”

“I’m not hungry, Carisi,” he said shortly.

“I didn’t ask if you were hungry,” he replied, his accent sounding thicker than usual. “I said I was here to cook for you.” He was already making his way into the kitchen and unloading his groceries. Barba took note of the food inside. Tomatoes, fresh herbs, ground beef wrapped in butcher paper, homemade spaghetti noodles, spinach, cloves of garlic, olive oil, spices, fresh parmesan cheese. One loaf of bread, ready to be warmed in the oven. Barba watched, dazed, as Carisi began boiling, chopping, mincing, straining, browning. The detective talked about their recent cases, ones Barba knew a few details about from Liv’s voicemails, but he hadn’t seen them play out in person. He talked about their new sergeant, Mike Dodds, who wasn’t that bad, when you got to know him. Barba’s heart turned to stone. Amanda’s sister was back, Carisi told him. She was torn up about it, and still heavily pregnant. He couldn’t keep the concern out of his voice. _Poor schmuck,_ thought Barba. 

Finally, blessedly, dinner was done. Carisi searched the cabinets for dishes and served up the food, and Barba realized he had stood in the entrance of the kitchen, completely silent, the entire time. He grabbed his plate and sat next to the detective. The food smelled fucking divine.

“Do you want a drink or something?” Barba asked, finally.

“No offense, Counselor, but another drink is not what you need. I’ll get us some water,” he said, and he made to stand up. 

“I’ll get it,” Barba replied, stopping him, and he stood up to go back to the kitchen. He leaned against the refrigerator for a moment and ran a hand through his hair. Why was it so fucking hard for him to be around people? He’d been a mouthy son of a bitch since he was a child, he made his living arguing with his friends from college, and now he could barely get himself to string two sentences together. He barely felt human anymore.

“You okay in there?” Carisi called, and Barba swore under his breath. He got them each a glass of water and sat down in front of his overflowing plate.

“Carisi, why are you here?” he repeated.

“I’m worried about you,” the detective answered. “I think you’ve been holed up here long enough. I don’t know why you left the lieutenant and broke her heart, but you’ve done enough hiding with your tail between your legs. It’s time to rejoin the real world.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said quietly. He took a bite. Jesus, it was amazing.

“Trust me, Counselor, I do. I’ve been where you are. My ex in the LAPD did a number on me, and if she called me up tomorrow, I’d probably be right back where you are. But trust me when I say it’s time to move on.”

“No, I mean—” He hesitated. There was no point denying the relationship. He and Olivia were the worst-kept secret in Manhattan. “I didn’t leave her. She left me.”

“That’s not true.” Carisi sounded so sure of himself that Barba couldn’t help but snap.

He hit the roof. “Carisi, how is it that you’re so fucking convinced you know everything?” He slammed his fork down, frustrated, and regretted it immediately. There was tomato sauce on his ceiling. Carisi didn’t even flinch.

When Barba had calmed down enough to look sheepish, Carisi answered his question. He had tomato sauce on the corner of his mouth. “The other day, Amanda was having a rough go of it, you know she’s got family stuff going on, and she was spinning out. We were in the break room, and I was holding her hand, talking her through it. As a friend,” he clarified, blushing. “Anyway, the lieutenant walked in on us. Now, I expected her to make fun of us. Rollins expected her to ream us out. She just turned and walked away, slamming her office door. When she came out, she was still crying.” Barba’s heart broke again inside his chest, for what felt like the millionth time. “She might have ended it, Counselor,” Carisi continued. “But make no mistake: you’re the one who left.”

Finally, the dam broke. “I don’t know how to do this,” he admitted. “All I want to do is see her, and that’s why I know I shouldn’t. She asked me to let her go, and I understand why, but it doesn’t make it any easier.” He looked down. “I love her. I don’t know how to stop.”

“I don’t think you have to stop, Counselor,” Carisi said. “I think you just have to love her enough to do what’s right for her. And you have to respect yourself enough to admit that you deserve to be happy, too. If not with her, then on your own, at least for a while.”

Barba was quiet, contemplative. Things were starting to make sense. “How’s she doing?” he asked, feeling like an asshole for not asking sooner.

“She’s holding it together,” Carisi told him. “She has to. She’s got a command, a kid. She can’t just fall apart. But she misses you, and she’s tired of working with these new guys you keep sending.”

He blew out a breath. “I don’t know how to do this.” He looked up. “You seem to have all the answers, Carisi. How do we make this work?”

Carisi clasped his shoulder. “Fake it till you make it, Counselor. Get up, come to work, pretend you’re still an arrogant, sarcastic, high-powered lawyer and not a sad, pathetic son of a bitch.” He squeezed his shoulder. “Just power through it. That’s what she’s doing.”

 

~~

 

Faking it was harder than he realized. Their next case was emotionally exhausting, trying to put away a serial child rapist and killer who had gone free for over a decade. He saw Olivia for the first time in almost two months when they met jointly with the mothers of two of the victims, explaining the terms of the deal they had struck with the defendant, Lewis Hodda, and walking them through what court would be like. Olivia was compassionate, focused, determined to get justice for these families. He thought maybe they could work together after all. Everything was going okay. 

Of course, then the case went sideways. There would be a whole trial, testimony, a million opportunities for him to lose his goddamn mind around her.

At first, he was annoyed that Olivia sent Carisi to shadow him on this case, thinking it must have been done out of spite, to needle him. There was no way she knew about their dinner, he thought. But Carisi provided a welcome distraction, a new partner to bounce ideas off of and collaborate with, and he rarely had to be alone with Olivia. He found himself both appreciating and resenting the buffer between them. He wondered if she did that on purpose.

The case was challenging, but they presented a united front, especially for Hector Rodriguez’s mother. Things between them were going okay, and then in the blink of an eye, they were falling apart. As the courtroom cleared out, she got angry, started yelling at him over a defense attorney’s strategy to discredit her, for not defending her, she said, and he realized that her anger was personal. It was all sitting there under the surface, waiting to boil over again. He sighed, willed himself to be strong. They had to talk about it. He asked her to go over her testimony, hoping to broach the topic lightly, but she snapped at him, saying, “I need to get back to the squad room.” She turned to walk away. He felt like she would always be walking away from him now. It was his last chance.

“No you don’t,” he called after her, steel in his voice. “Lewis Hodda might walk if Hastler can make the jury think you let your emotions get in the way of your police work, which is what they’re doing now. Sit your ass down, and work with me.” 

She froze, recognizing his double meaning, then turned to look at him, eyes blazing. “Fine,” she said, stalking toward the stand. “Then work.”

She walked up to the witness box and sat, her gaze defiant. He was sure she expected him to bite back at her, to follow her lead and bury the hurt and grief between them under a mountain of resentment. Instead, he stood in front of her, and bared his soul. “Olivia, I love you,” he said earnestly. She huffed and rolled her eyes, shooting daggers into his heart, but he kept going. It was now or never. 

“You’re mad at me, and that’s fine. I still love you,” he said.

“Stop saying that,” she spat.

“Why?”

“Because it doesn’t matter anymore.” Her eyes were swimming.

“Maybe not. I still love you.”

“Then why did you leave me?” she shouted. He was glad they were alone in the courtroom. “How could you walk out without talking to me, like you never cared about me?”

“Because I couldn’t say goodbye. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.” She rolled her eyes again. “I may be a coward, and a cliché, but that’s the truth. I will never be a strong enough man to say goodbye to you.”

She sniffed. “Lucy told me about your playdates with Noah.”

He was confused at the accusation in her tone. “Of course she did. I wouldn’t have asked her to do anything for me if I thought she would do it behind your back. I didn’t want him to be scared or confused. I wanted him to know I would still be there for him, even if I wasn’t around as much anymore.” She was crying freely now. His eyes were stinging, but he willed his tears not to fall. He didn’t deserve the satisfaction of the release.

“Then why did you stop? She told me they haven’t seen you in three weeks.”

“It stopped being good for him. Seeing me just made him more upset,” he hedged. “The visits were what I wanted, not what he needed.” He couldn’t tell her about the threats, he reminded himself. She didn’t need that burden, along with everything else.

Her head was bent, and her hands were folded in her lap. He stepped forward and ducked his head, forcing her to look at him. “Olivia, I love you. I will love you until the day I die. But I’m doing what you asked me to do. You told me that we had to stop, and I trusted you. I trusted you to do the best thing for our family, and you need to trust me to still be in your corner. I’m sorry I hurt you, I’m sorry I left you. I needed time to learn to feel like a person without you. I’m trying, Liv.”

She sighed. “I know. I know you are. I’m just—sad, and scared, and lonely.”

“I know. But we still have to work together. If we can’t even work together, everything we went through was for nothing. At the very least, we need to get through today, to get Mrs. Rodriguez some justice, some closure.”

She paused, sniffed. She looked for a tissue and dabbed her eyes, trying to control the spill of her makeup. “Okay, Rafael. Okay. We’ll get through today. Tell me what you need.”

He felt like he could finally breathe.

He worked with her for a short while, reminding her of key facts of the timeline and the legal definition of a coerced confession. By the time they were done, they were both a little more steady, more sure. He told her it was okay to step down, and when she did, she grasped his arm to stop him from walking away. “Rafael, wait.” 

He turned to look at her. “We don’t have much time, Liv, they’re going to open up the courtroom again.”

She kissed him softly, just once, and met his eyes. “I love you, too. In case I don’t… get to say it again. I love you. I always will.”

He nodded, then took his seat at the prosecution table. When court was back in session, he was ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place immediately following Season 17, Episode 5, Community Policing, and it continues through Season 17, Episode 9, Depravity Standard. I'm so sorry for the angst, but it had to be done. We're not totally out of the woods yet, but remember that I promised you a happy ending.
> 
> For those of you wondering about my timeline, my headcanon is that Olivia and Barba started seeing each other romantically in May or June of 2014 between 15.24 and 16.1, and they're together off-screen until 17.5, Community Policing, which takes place in August of 2015. He's not in 17.6, 17.7, or 17.8, which supports my theory that they've broken up and are avoiding each other. I know she has a few scenes with Tucker interspersed in there, but none of them are overtly romantic in my opinion, and if anything it feels like he's sniffing around and she's not interested yet, just being polite. I don't think her romantic involvement with Tucker starts up officially until sometime just before or immediately after 17.11, Townhouse Incident, which takes place in January of 2016. And, of course, Barba finds out about Olivia and stupid Tucker in March 2016, during the events of 17.17, Manhattan Transfer, and our poor ADA is understandably devastated. If something in the show negates this timeline, I must have missed it, sorry! But this is what's in my head.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barba decides to tell the whole truth.

It seemed like there was always some lost soul knocking on Olivia Benson’s door. 

Noah was finally down for the night after waking up from a bad dream, and she had _just_ sat down with a glass of wine to read a book and hopefully get a decent night’s sleep. Her most recent case had been creepy, and she was having trouble convincing herself that no one was spying on her, that she was safe, until their suspect was locked up. She stood up and walked to the door, her toes curling against the cold wood floors, wondering why people never had the decency to call ahead anymore. She looked through the peephole and found herself both surprised and relieved, ignoring the butterflies in her stomach to open her apartment door and usher in her late-night guest.

“Barba,” she said. “Come in. How did it go with the DA?”

He walked in and took a seat on her couch, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his fingers steepled together. she thought, but then she chided herself. _That was a long time ago. Too long, now._ Still, the sight was like a balm on her tired soul. 

She missed him. 

That didn’t matter now. 

“All things considered, it went better than I expected.” He reached across the coffee table and took a sip from her wineglass, and she got up to grab him his own. “I’m suspended for two weeks without pay. I’m officially censured. I’m not… I’m on thin ice. But I still have my job, and I’m not being transferred or demoted. Or disbarred, which was an option.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, sitting next to him again. She wanted to reach out and touch him, to stroke his arm, to comfort him, so badly that she clasped her hands in front of her. “What can I do?”

“There’s nothing to do, Liv. It’s done.” He reached for the bottle of wine and poured himself a glass.

She looked around her apartment, wondering if it looked any different in his eyes. She wasn’t completely sure why he was here—she didn’t know how to comfort him in a manner that was appropriate for their tenuous relationship. She certainly hadn’t expected him to show up, unannounced, at her door in the middle of the night. He hadn’t done that in a long time, since before Ed. She flinched when she remembered that afternoon in his office, the pain in his eyes when he asked, “Are you involved with him?” 

Even when he confronted her, she couldn’t bring herself to admit it. “Don’t ask me that,” she had said, avoiding his stare, screaming at herself internally for being so stupid, so weak, so careless with his heart. In the back of her mind, she had hoped that someday, they would find their way back to each other. She had hoped that he still felt the same. When she finally looked in his eyes that afternoon, she saw a door slamming in her face.

“You and I are done talking,” he had told her, and she finally fled his office, avoiding Carmen’s worried glances as she practically sprinted down the hall. She knew they weren’t just done talking—they were _done._ When she met her then-sergeant Mike Dodds by the elevators, she was unable to control the tears streaming down her face. Wordlessly, he had handed her a handkerchief from his pocket, and that made her cry even harder.

She should have told him she was seeing someone, she knew. It was so much worse that she hid it from him. But truthfully, she thought, still full of shame and regret, she had hoped he would never find out. Ed was only supposed to be a short-term solution to a temporary problem, as callous as she knew that sounded. After she was held hostage that day in the townhouse, forced to listen to Tess Crivello being raped in the next room and Richard Crivello dying on the kitchen floor, trying to control her flashbacks to William Lewis while maintaining her composure enough to keep everyone safe, she had shattered. Every morning she woke up and the pillow next to hers was empty, she was reminded all over again that Rafael had left, that she was alone. Ed was there for her. And when he stopped by late at night, she didn’t have to think about it anymore, didn’t have to lie awake remembering how afraid and alone she had been. So she let him in. She just kept letting him in.

She was almost ready to break it off with Ed, knowing that it wasn’t fair to him, knowing she could never care for him the way he wanted her to, when Rafael found out about them and went nuclear. He was furious with her, but under all of that fury, she could see his hurt, his shock, his jealousy. She tried to get pissed off too, to be angry when he didn’t give her a heads up and reported her, getting her transferred out of SVU, her home, but she knew deep down that she was still only angry at herself. 

So she doubled down on her relationship with Ed, partially out of embarrassment and partially out of guilt. After the investigation, he needed someone to be there for him, too. It was easy to go along with what he wanted, and since Rafael had forced them into disclosing their relationship, she didn’t want to look stupid in front of Dodds and her bosses at 1PP. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of knowing the sordid details of her romantic life.

They weren’t friends for a long time after that. He didn’t trust her anymore, and it hurt too much to be around him and know that he would always be out of her reach. Through it all, though, they still had their work together, and she was grateful for that connection, that reminder. 

Even though she still missed him. 

She knew that didn’t matter now. 

They were finally in a place where they could be alone together, where they could get dinner or drinks without it gutting her. They were finally friends again, maybe even best friends again, and she told herself to be happy with it, that it was more than she deserved. When he asked her to Forlini’s the previous Saturday night, telling her he had something he needed to talk about, she had internally rejoiced, trying and failing to tamp down the excitement in her chest. But when they got there, instead of listening, she had needled at him and harangued him until he got involved in her case, getting him blackmailed, censured, and suspended in the process. 

He cleared his throat. “Liv, there’s something else you should know.”

She dragged her mind back to the present and looked at him. He was studiously avoiding eye contact with her, wearing that same nervous, tight-lipped look he had on his face when he told her about Ashtonja Abreu. She raised her eyebrows. “What is it?” she asked. 

He hesitated. 

“Rafael, come on. What happened?” His first name slipped out of her mouth without her brain’s permission. _Must be the wine,_ she thought, but she knew it was more than that. He looked so good on her couch. 

She wondered how it was possible to miss someone who was sitting three feet away.

She reminded herself that it didn’t matter now.

Finally, he looked up at her. “Before I was suspended, I told the DA about us.”

She sat up straighter. “You what?” she breathed.

He was shaking. “I told him that I had been involved with a detective from SVU for over a year, more than a year ago. I told him that the relationship ended because we were worried about the ethical and legal ramifications of our involvement and how it might reflect on our separate departments. I told him that we have continued to work together without incident, and I took full responsibility for the decision not to disclose the relationship sooner.”

She was stunned. “What did he say?”

He smiled a crooked, rueful smile. “He said, ‘Why are you telling me about your relationship with Olivia Benson?’”

She would have laughed if she weren’t so bewildered. They really were the worst-kept secret in Manhattan. She took a long sip of wine. “Why did you tell him?” She couldn’t imagine a reason that would be good enough for him to put his career further in jeopardy. He would never disclose out of spiteful or political reasons, and they were practically ancient history at this point. She might still miss him, but he didn’t need to know that. Their work was what mattered now, and he had almost thrown it all away.

He hesitated, clearly wrestling with something. A light went out behind his eyes. “That’s not important. I just wanted you to know.” 

She reached for him then. She couldn’t stop herself anymore. He sank deeper into the couch, his eyes squeezed shut in concentration. She had only meant to comfort him, but he looked like he was in physical pain. He cleared his throat and spoke again. 

“I told him that I had been threatened, and harassed, and blackmailed over the past year and that it was the one secret I had left, and I would be damned if I would let anyone try to use you against me. I didn’t want anyone to think I was ashamed of what had happened between us, and…” He swallowed and opened his eyes, searching hers. “I needed to know if we still had a future. I said that if being in love with you was incompatible with the job, then I was incompatible with the job, and he should just get it all over with now.”

Her breath was caught in her throat. She felt like the room was spinning. She kept hearing those words, _in love._ He was still in love with her. 

“Olivia, I’m sorry. I didn’t plan it. For what it’s worth, I don’t think he’ll say anything to Dodds.”

He was in love with her, and he was sorry? She still couldn’t make the words move past her tongue. 

“I’m sorry,” he said again, moving to stand. “I’ll go.”

Watching him walk toward her door jolted her into action. “Wait,” she said, and he stopped. He turned. He hoped. She could read his face better than anyone’s except maybe Noah’s, and the hopefulness in his eyes almost brought tears to her own. She couldn’t possibly deserve all this faith, this enduring, unconditional trust and love. “Come back. Sit. Explain.”

He blew out one of his trademark sighs and resumed his spot on the couch. “I really didn’t plan it, Liv. It was just that conversation on the steps, before my meeting, when I told you that not everything done in the dark was shameful. I couldn’t stand the idea of someone thinking I was ashamed of you, that I regret you. I needed to know that if we ever got a second chance, it would be even a little bit better than a snowball’s chance in hell.”

“I thought you were mad at me,” she said. “You wouldn’t tell me about the blackmail, you didn’t trust me. I thought you were still mad at me.”

He smiled grimly. “I’ve been mad at you almost every day since we met, Olivia. You drive me crazy. That doesn’t mean I’m not crazy about you.” He ducked his head, sheepish. “I didn’t tell you about Ashtonja because I was being blackmailed for paying a minor for sex. I didn’t do it. But if you thought I did… I couldn’t deal with that.”

“I know you would never,” she said vehemently. “There was never a question, for any of us.” 

He nodded. “I know. I was just scared you would look at me differently. I’m sorry, I was wrong.”

She nodded back and pushed ahead. “I thought you were done with me... after Tucker.”

She saw his fingers tighten around his wineglass. Neither of them wanted to talk about this, but it was past time. “I was. I tried to be, anyway.” He blew out a breath, clearly resigned. “But I know that I hurt you, Olivia. I wasn’t there for you. We were always supposed to be friends first, and I lost sight of that. And then you hurt me. You didn’t tell me about Tucker. The fact that you were even _with_ Tucker hurt me, even though I didn’t have any right to those feelings anymore. But I had been... waiting for you, and it was the first time I realized you might never come back. You had moved on, but I never could. I still can’t. And then I got you transferred out of SVU....” 

He ran a hand over his face. “My point is, we both made a lot of mistakes, but I think the problem is that we need each other. I don’t think we ever knew how to be just colleagues, just friends. We’re better when we’re together. I need you to ground me, to remind me of the real consequences of the choices we make, to remind me of the world outside the goddamn job. And you need me... honestly I don’t know why, but I hope to God you do.”

He downed the rest of his wine and took one of her hands in both of his own. Her nerves were screaming at the familiar feel of his fingers wrapped around hers. _Oh,_ she had missed him.  
“I want to be with you,” he said, eyes wide and painfully earnest. “I think we could do it right this time. You have enough goodwill from the city and the higher-ups in the NYPD for arresting a serial killer and a copycat in the same week that they’d let you get away with anything right now, and God knows you’ve worked with ADAs with bigger issues than this. McCoy indicated that he wasn’t averse to keeping us working on the same cases, with some adjustments. It won’t be easy, but nothing worth it ever is.”

He let go of her hand and stood up. “But it’s been a long time," he said slowly, "and I know things have changed for you. I’m not here to beg you or convince you. I don’t need to know right away. I’m just here to say that I still care about you, and that I think we could have a future together, and I’m asking you to think about whether you still feel the same way about me.” He swallowed. “When we ended, you said _maybe, someday._ Someday is here, Olivia. This chance we have now—it’s a one-time thing. If you don’t... if you don’t want me now, I have to move on.” 

He leaned down to kiss her forehead, and her mind was screaming at her to grab him, to pull his face down to hers, to promise him the moon and all the stars if he would just stay. 

She was still too stunned to speak, but as he turned to go, she finally found the words. “I need you because you challenge me. You make my cases stronger, you sharpen my instincts, my insights. You center me, you remind me that I can believe in myself, that there’s someone who will always, always be on my side.”

He walked back toward her. “I love you,” he said, his voice rough, his hands cupping her face, bent on one knee to look her in the eye. 

“And I never moved on from you,” she continued. “Tucker was just—”

“I don’t want to talk about Tucker," he breathed. "I want to talk about how much I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said quietly. “That’s all that matters now.”

Finally, he kissed her, claiming her mouth with his own, pressing his whole body against her like he would never be close enough, and she remembered, for the first time in over a year, what it felt like to come home. 

Noah was still asleep in the next room, so she broke off their kiss, her breath ragged and her brain on fire, and dragged him up off his knees and into her room. She smiled at the thought of her pillows smelling like him in the morning. She pushed him down on her bed and pounced. “I missed you,” she said, and he tipped his hips up into her, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her down into his embrace. 

They found each other that night in a hundred ways, and all of them were familiar, but somehow new. She saw the possibilities of their life together opening up before her, and she felt like they were finally able to take their time.

In the small hours of the morning, when they were completely spent but still quietly joyful, they made plans for their near and distant future. They squabbled, because they were still Olivia and Rafael, and they would still be squabbling when they were 85. But their jabs had no bite, no steel behind them. It was the gently teasing of two people who had taken far too long to find each other, but were happy to be together now.

They fell asleep holding hands, and when she woke up, she found that she was still smiling. She looked over at the pillow next to hers and was overcome with joy.

He had stayed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place after Season 18 Episode 15, Know It All. You might need a little willing suspension of disbelief to buy into the idea that they had disclosed their relationship and were quietly together during the second half of season 18 and all of season 19, but for me, it made sense because it was when she started using his first name and nickname in public, and he very clearly enjoyed it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barba has a question.

Rafael Barba had lived a complicated life. It was sometimes difficult, sometimes frightening, sometimes exhilarating. He was sometimes funny and wry, tender and empathetic, but he was also too often lonely and pensive, anxious and regretful. He walked away from fights he should have won, and he won fights he should have lost. These experiences served him well when he was prosecuting crimes, advocating for victims, playing the angel on the shoulder of the American justice system. They served the prosecutor, but not the man. His career fulfilled him, but it also drained him, through cracks in his faith and his confidence that got bigger every year. 

A crack when he contributed to the death of Ashtonja Abreu’s mother for the sake of a conviction. A crack when William Lewis walked out of his courtroom and into Olivia’s apartment, to lie in wait. A crack when his oldest friend, whose passion and goodness had saved so many, shattered the dreams of their people with a few swipes of his careless, callous fingers on a screen. A crack when two Muslim Americans were murdered, and the truth would only set their killers free. He had asked Olivia that day if she was disenchanted with him, but her faith was steady. It was he who could not find firm footing on their side of the law. 

When he met Drew Householder, those cracks turned into a chasm. He flipped a switch, and both of them were gone.

When the dust settled and he was found not guilty (although he was sure he would never see himself as innocent), he was glad to take a break from being Rafael Barba. He needed time and space. For clarity. For sanity. When he tried to take up the mantle of Rafael Barba again, he found it didn’t fit him anymore. 

Olivia cried when he told her he had to move on, from their job, his life’s work, but he was happy. Rafael Barba had been threatened, blackmailed, publicly humiliated, and emotionally tortured over his work in the justice system in the last two years alone. The Rafael Barba that the world knew, who wore two-thousand-dollar suits and arrogance like armor, was gone. Maybe resting, maybe dead. 

He finally gave himself permission to be Rafa, only Rafa now. Rafa wore dark wash blue jeans and a hoodie when he carried his sleeping kindergartener to bed. The only courtroom he visited was when he presided over criminal cases in his living room, usually The People of the State of New York v. Eddie the Elephant. He was learning, growing, thriving, imagining, dreaming again. Rafa was repairing the cracks, the chasm. He was becoming more whole every day. 

If there was one beam of guiding light in his transition from Rafael Barba to Rafa, it was the love of Olivia Benson. It had taken him too long to find it, but when he did, he understood that it was all he had ever been looking for, some sense in the chaos, some shelter in the storm. She taught him what justice really looked like, and she gave him the courage to realize that he could no longer find it in a courtroom, in the same way that he had trouble finding God in a church. 

He found God when he touched Olivia Benson. 

One night in their bedroom, when he was finding God, her forehead resting against his as they moved together toward something that made them feel infinite, Rafa whispered words that had been on his mind for years, words that Rafael Barba never had the courage to utter but came naturally to Rafa’s tongue: “Marry me.”

She came to rest in his lap, still joined with him, her hands on his shoulders, her mouth gentle and sweet against his own. When she pulled back, she was smiling. “Ask me again in a few minutes. I want to make sure you really mean it.”

He laughed softly and rolled her onto her back. Her legs hitched high on his hips, and he ravished her, trailing hot, openmouthed kisses down her neck and onto her breasts. He teased her nipples, spurred on by the sounds she made when she was clearly trying to stifle her own cries of pleasure. 

He increased their tempo, and her cries began to crescendo, mezzo-forte to fortissimo, so that he had to swallow her moans down with his own. He thrust hard, once, twice, once more, and she came quivering, shaking, gasping against him. Her grip on his back went loose, and she dragged her hands up to his hair, pulling his head back and latching her mouth onto his throat, his most sensitive spot that she loved to claim, and he finally shuddered and broke apart, overcome with delicious agony.

He collapsed on top of her as gingerly as possible, still connected to her, not wanting to be apart a second longer than necessary. He kissed her temple and buried his face in her hair. Who needed air, who needed space, when there was Olivia? He laid there until she started squirming beneath him, running her hands up and down his sides, hinting, lightly, that they separate. Reluctantly, he rolled off of her, missing her instantly, until she laid her head on his chest and crooked a leg over his. 

“Marry me,” he repeated quietly, and he felt her smile bloom against his chest. 

“Okay,” she responded, before reaching up to kiss him again. “When?”

“Now,” he said. “As soon as possible. Whenever you want.”

She laughed. “You’re not being very practical, Mr. Barba.”

“I don’t want to be practical. I want to be married.”

“We’ll work out the details later,” she laughed, and he thought that might be his life’s work now, to hear her laugh like that, every day. “But I think you’re going to want a little more ceremony than just the two of us, naked, in bed. A wedding is a one-time thing.”

He disagreed, but stayed quiet. Ceremony was overrated. He wanted forever to begin as soon as possible. He thought about them, in the future, as a family. He thought about taking her name. She was a Benson, Noah was a Benson, and Rafael Barba was gone. He had moved on.

Rafa was here to stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place at an unspecified time after Season 19, Episode 13, The Undiscovered Country. I'm sorry this last chapter is so short, but frankly, watching The Undiscovered Country makes me horrifically depressed, and I wanted to keep things vague enough that it could still be believable within the current canon. 
> 
> I appreciate all the kind words and encouragement over the last week. I had so much fun writing this, and I'm considering adding a few one-shots of domesticity and "deleted scenes" to this universe as they come to my brain before I start grad school and forfeit all my time to write for fun.
> 
> Happy reading!

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter takes place immediately following the events of season 14, episode 3. I tried to stick as closely to canon as possible, but forgive me if I made a continuity error. I added the bit about Nick and Amanda meeting them at the bar and Nick being suspicious because there's this really great moment in Rapist Anonymous (15.8) where Amanda accuses Nick of being "jealous of Olivia and Brian, jealous of Olivia and Barba, even Cragen..." and my little shipper's heart took that as evidence that something had happened between Olivia and Barba, and Nick knew about it. Basically they've been secretly together this whole time and you can't convince me otherwise.


End file.
